Widener Library Treasure Room Exhibits Florentine Picture Books This Week--Savonarola Collection is Also on Display

In the Widener Library treasure room, two new exhibitions are being featured this week, including a few of the more interesting copies of the Florentine picture books. The other display is a group of engravings by Bartolemeo Pinelli Romano, done in 1831.

The Library's collection of Florentine picture books is made up of the Savonarola collection, the collection of Sacre Rappresentazioni, and the Newman and Fairfax Murray collections. Florentine picture books are ilustrated by fifteenth and sixteenth country woodcuts, which represent the story of Italian book illustration. They are, with only a few exceptions, small quartos of only a few leaves each. They are religious books, plays and books of popular poems books largely for religious instruction and pictures were used not so much to illustrate particular passages as to inspire the reader with a feeling of devotion. The illustrations are complete little pictures, and each picture is surrounded by a frame.

Of the Savonarola books at least 40 were printed in Florence by 1500, and the 39 Sacre Rappresentazionl woodcut illustrations were used. From the 70 blocks used in illustrating the Savonarola books printed in Florence at this period, impressions from only about a dozen are missing in the Newman and Fairfax Murray collection, which Harvard owns.